There were two victims in the Dáil chamber yesterday. One, Maíria Cahill, sat silently in the visitors' gallery. She says she is a victim of sexual abuse. The other, Gerry Adams, sat among his fellow TDs and claimed to be a victim of political abuse. He had plenty to say.

Nobody in Leinster House was disputing that the Belfast woman had been raped repeatedly by an IRA man. Sinn Féin denies there was a cover-up of the crime by Northern “republicans”.

But few apart from the unblinking believers of Adams were buying the Sinn Féin leader’s self-serving defence of himself and those “decent” volunteers who are being wilfully misunderstood by people out to get him. But, in fairness to the Sinn Féin leader, he was acting on his own words by adopting a “victim-centred” approach to legitimate and worrying questions about how these Northern republicans moved sex offenders south of the Border to protect the reputation of their organisation.

What Adams delivered was a victim-centred reproach. And he did it to the disgust of a silently seething Dáil.

Powerful and angry

He rose to speak after a series of powerful and angry contributions from Taoiseach

Enda Kenny

, Tánaiste

Joan Burton

and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin.

Adams dismissed them as politically motivated personal attacks. But there was nothing new in what he had to say and he failed to answer the disturbing questions about Sinn Féin’s “unholy collusion” with IRA “untouchables” shunted south to unsuspecting communities.

Instead, he focused on the story of Maíria Cahill, the one brave person who has broken the code of omertà to reveal the sordid reality behind the IRA’s treatment of abused women and children.

Yet again Adams, who claims never to have been a member of the IRA, accepted that the movement’s response to dealing with these abusers was “inadequate”.

Yet again he accepted the abusers were sometimes moved away from the scenes of their crimes. But not where Cahill was concerned: “As I said, we have been accused of a cover-up and moving the abuser about. No evidence whatsoever has been produced to corroborate these claims.”

Maíria Cahill, it seems, was treated differently to those unnamed others. He can admit that what she says happened to her – faced to confront her abuser, interrogated at length by an IRA “kangaroo court” until the man who attacked her was moved on – happened to those unnamed others.

But no, he can adamantly declare that it never happened to Maíria. “I reject these charges. They are not true.”

Above in the public gallery, Maíria Cahill, who was sitting directly in the Sinn Féin leader's eye line, put her head in her hands. As for the silent victims, afraid to break their cover, "they were failed by everyone, and, in some cases, by republicans."

Adams went on to tell the Taoiseach what he thinks should be done to help all victims of abuse. Nobody has done more than Gerry has. “I have moved across each state in term of crimes that have been committed in the Border region and I will continue to do so.”

By the way, the rapists and abusers were not moved. They were “resettled”. And now, for base political motives, “establishment” politicians and members of the establishment media seek to “smear” Adams for their own electoral gain.

What of the man who raped Maíria, he wondered? Why are the politicians and commentators not talking about him? He seems “to have been disappeared” said Gerry, without the faintest hint of irony.

He is right, to some extent, about his party’s opponents in the Dáil seeking to damage him and Sinn Féin by holding yesterday’s remarkable debate. But Adams is wrong to think this is their only motive.

Grim-faced Sinn Féin TDs

The anger and concern from across the floor and in the benches around the grim-faced Sinn Féin TDs was very real, as it should be. Sometimes people have to be confronted and hit with unsavoury truths about their post-Belfast Agreement past, whether or not they are holding the peace process in their arms.

In his searing indictment of the IRA and supporters, Kenny didn’t spare the lash. “They covered up the abuse, moved the perpetrators around so the untouchables would remain untouchable,” he said. “It didn’t matter what damage they might cause.”

The Taoiseach witheringly referred to “republicans who thought so much of this Republic that they would honour us with their rapists; gift us with their child abusers”.

Regina Doherty, Fine Gael TD for Meath East, reserved her anger for Mary Lou McDonald and her response to the controversy: "I am disappointed beyond belief that you would so cheaply sell your integrity for political positioning."

As for Adams: “I wouldn’t believe the Lord’s Prayer from his mouth.” But how could she? Regina looked straight across at Mary Lou, who was seated next to her leader. “It actually would mean criticising that chap beside you.”

Kenny referred to the Sinn Féin’s deputy leader’s “clearly embedded pathological loyalty” to Adams bringing about a “compulsive denial of a cover-up in the matter of Ms Cahill”.

Controlled anger

The barrage continued with a display of controlled anger from Burton as she spoke of “the live cover-up that is going on”. She called the response of Adams to the allegations as “one of denial, evasion and seeking to protect the IRA”. When he spoke later there wasn’t a bad word from Gerry about the IRA.

The Fianna Fáil leader gave a forensic and chilling account of the IRA and Sinn Féin’s track record in dealing with the controversy and said it went way past the dawning of the peace process. What happened was “not some unfortunate and unacknowledged secret”, he said. “It was a standard operating procedure within the movement.”

All the while, Adams listened. Sometimes stroking his beard, at other times tapping away on his mobile phone. His party’s attack on the media coverage of the story was mentioned by many speakers.

Martin detailed the reaction he had to put up with, particularly the “swarming abuse” from social media. But the most unsettling part of this astonished few hours in the Dáil chamber was the ventilation of Adams’s approach to dealing with his brother Liam, who is now serving a prison sentence for the rape of his young daughter.

He set the facts out – as Doherty and others did before him. Adams briefly left the chamber. It was not easy to listen to. But under the circumstances it was relevant.

“Deputy Adams, why did you lie about the knowledge of your brother’s abuse of your niece?” asked Doherty.

“For 10 years he allowed his brother to work with children,” said Burton.

“In 20 years he did nothing,” said Martin. He had no time for Adams’s repeated call to former IRA members to come forward with information. “No matter how many times he calls on its members to come forward, no-one ever comes, no one ever does.”

The poet Maya Angelou – Adams tweeted one of her poems after his brother was convicted – was quoted back to him. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,” said Kenny, who added: “Down here you ‘buried’ the dangerous living along with the discarded dead.”

It was a riveting afternoon session in the chamber – but for the most awful of reasons. When he rose to speak, Adams repeated his call for IRA volunteers to come forward with information. TDs laughed quietly. He said there was no evidence of perpetrators being moved south of the Border.

“What about your brother?” shouted Labour’s Robert Dowds. Above in the gallery, Maíria Cahill took notes. Adams ignored the specific questions directed at him and adopted a scattergun approach.

He even brought in the Government’s handling of the tax-evasion dossier in the news.

“You, Taoiseach, have brought the Dáil and your office into disrepute,” he thundered, before pointing out the Government’s cutting of funding for rape crisis centres.

Damp squib

Then, to show his bona fides in the matter of handing over information (a bit late in the day now) he revealed this damp squib: “I did make an appeal for information, and since that appeal I have received information from a republican source in relation to these matters. It came to me anonymously and while I cannot vouch for it, neither do I doubt its authenticity . . . So I passed this information to an Garda Síochána.”

You could hear the incredulous laughter from the surrounding benches.

Adams finished his victim- centred reproach by bringing up his brother’s case: “Speaking personally, on behalf of my wife and family as well as my close family, we deeply reject the continuous taunts and offensive commentary by some here about what was, for our family, a deeply traumatic episode in our family’s life . . . There is nothing more personal that the remarks that some of you have made here today.”

His voice cracked. He sounded emotional. It was, indeed, unprecedented for such material to be aired on the floor of the Dáil. But then, the evidence Adams gave at his brother’s first trial was quite astonishing.

It also explains why the prosecution didn’t recall him to give evidence at the second trial, after which Liam Adams was convicted.

The transcript of Gerry Adams’s evidence is available on the internet. Look it up. The Sinn Féin leader has only himself to blame for the fact that his part in that trial was discussed yesterday.